Why Auburn needed to revamp its backcourt this offseason

While the Tigers had their No. 2 scoring season in program history, they were toward the bottom of the SEC in points from guards.

PG JP Pegues (Auburn Basketball/Twitter)

When a college basketball team wins 27 games — including a major conference tournament title — it clearly doesn’t have many weaknesses.

In fact, calling anything about the team a “weakness” feels harsh, especially one that finished in the top five in advanced rating systems such as KenPom and T-Rank.

And, in this day and age of the sport, when that same team returns three of its top four players from the previous season, including an All-American, you wouldn’t expect an offseason of overhaul.

But that’s exactly what Auburn has done over the last couple of months under Bruce Pearl.

A few days after a shock first-round NCAA Tournament exit, veteran sixth man K.D. Johnson announced his intentions to transfer. Pearl explained that the decision was mutual, as playing time likely wouldn’t be as plentiful on the Plains as it would be somewhere else. Ultimately, Johnson decided to transfer to mid-major George Mason.

Johnson’s transfer was just the beginning. A week later, point guard Tre Donaldson announced his decision to transfer. (He would land at Michigan.) Six days after that, fellow point guard Aden Holloway would do the same. (He would make a surprise move to rival Alabama.) But it only took a couple of days for the Tigers to land their new floor general — Furman veteran JP Pegues.

“I think for JP, it was the fact that he had experience, the fact that he’d been a three-year starter, the fact that he could really shoot the ball,” Pearl said last month. “He could play out of ball screens. He was a really good defender with a chance to be better. Because we had played against Furman in a preseason exhibition game, he knew the pace, he knew the way our guys played.”

The next month for Auburn was filled with links to more targets in the transfer portal, and even a few visits.

The Tigers would eventually get the additional forward they wanted in SMU reserve Ja’Heim “Turtle” Hudson, but the big surprise came toward the end of May when Georgia Tech leading scorer Miles Kelly announced his decision to transfer to Auburn.

For Pearl and his staff, Kelly represented the final piece that it wanted in a backcourt that lost three players to transfer — and one to graduation in former walk-on Lior Berman — while adding Pegues, 5-star Tahaad Pettiford and 4-star Jakhi Howard.

Auburn will bring back No. 3 scorer Chad Baker-Mazara and No. 4 scorer Denver Jones from last season’s team. Both guards transferred to the Tigers last offseason, making the jump from the smaller levels of college basketball to the SEC. By the end of the campaign, they were huge factors in Auburn cutting down the nets in Nashville.

At guard, everything else around Baker-Mazara and Jones changed in a short amount of time. The point guard duo from last season went elsewhere, with Auburn opting to plug in experience at the position. Kelly, along with Pettiford and Howard, represent high-scoring potential that can thrive in off-ball roles.

Auburn’s backcourt wasn’t bad last season — far from it, in fact. But Pearl made it clear that his goal this offseason was to upgrade the guard spots on a team that has serious title aspirations.

“Our guard play overall last year was somewhere in the middle of the league,” Pearl said. “I thought our front line play was somewhere near the top of it. Our guard play has to improve.”

The Tigers’ guard play is a perfect example of a championship-caliber team still having clear room to improve.